The Gift
by ProbableImpossibilities
Summary: He was trapped in the shadows until his mind was nearly eaten away. Now that he's returned, his hikari wants nothing more than for him to return to the darkness. But since he won't, they'll have to learn to live with each other.
1. The Darkness

**The Gift**

Everywhere. It's everywhere. It's everything. No, not everything. It's not me. But it's everywhere because it's everything. It's consumed everything, so therefore it must _be_ everything. It consumed Bakura, so therefore it must be Bakura. So therefore it must be me. And it's hungry.

But it's not me. I'm me. I have to be me, and not it, because I'm not hungry, and it's hungry.

It's Bakura. Bakura is the darkness. Or the darkness is Bakura? The darkness is Bakura and the darkness is everywhere and everything and since it's everything it must be me, too, so Bakura is me.

But I'm not Bakura. Bakura is hungry, I'm not hungry, I'm not hungry because I'm not eating, I'm being eaten. The darkness is Bakura and the darkness is hungry so Bakura's eating me. Is the darkness Bakura, or is Bakura the darkness?

Neither. Both. Because darkness is chaos and it has no order, but it's all the same so it's perfectly ordered. The perfect paradox. Perfect. The darkness is perfect?

No, because it has a limit. The darkness ends where the light starts, so therefore the darkness can't be perfect. The darkness can't be perfect because perfect is limitless and the darkness has a limit.

Where's the limit? Where the light starts. Because that's where the darkness ends. So is the light perfect? The light has a limit, because it ends where the darkness starts.

No, that's not right. Darkness is where there is no light. The light could be everywhere if it wanted to, the light could be everything and everywhere and the light could be hungry and the light could be me. So the light is limitless. The light is perfect. The perfect paradox.

Bakura's the darkness. The darkness is hungry. The darkness isn't me. So what am I? I can't be the darkness because I'm not hungry, I'm not eating, it's eating my mind away. The darkness can't eat itself.

Am I the light? No, because I'm here and the darkness is here, too, and darkness is the absence of light. So I shouldn't be here, I should be in the light, because the light is perfect and limitless and the light doesn't eat because the light isn't hungry. The darkness is hungry.

But I'm not the light. The light is hateful, burning. It burned my skin and my back and pushed me into the darkness.

I don't want the darkness to eat me. I want the darkness to starve. But the only way to starve the darkness is to fill it with light. And I hate the light.

Is that the light? I can see it. It's so bright, it hurts, I feel pain. Pain in my soul.

But the darkness doesn't feel anything. It eats the pain. The darkness is numb. So how do I know I'm alive? I'm not. Because in the darkness, there's no pain.

I hate the light.

But I want to be alive. Not eaten. Not the darkness. Not Bakura. Not hungry, I'm not hungry. I'm not the darkness!

So I'll go into the light.

* * *

Where am I? Is this the light?

I can see. I see a gray table, gray chairs, gray walls, a gray man.

No, the man's not gray. His uniform is gray. Like the wall. His uniform is made of wall?

I blink and shake my head. The darkness has confused my thoughts. Scrambled them all over the place. I have to focus. Figure out where I am.

The pieces of my mind are coming back together, somewhat. I can think clearly now. Now that I can, I realize where I am. I'm back in the real world. I've come back from the darkness and into the light.

Which means I've taken _him_ over.

I can feel his fear, his loathing, his shock at my return. He cowers in a corner of his mind like a frightened animal, weakly trying to push me away. But he can't, now that I've escaped the darkness. Our body is mine. I smile, feeling the blood rush through my veins. It feels good to be alive. I won't let him ruin my good mood.

I turn my attention back to the gray man – no, the man in the gray uniform. He appears to be a police officer, and he's staring at me, one of his gray eyebrows raised in inquiry. He starts to speak.

"Look, Marik, I don't think it was premeditated, but a grand jury might not agree with me. Sure, you could probably get away with an insanity defense, but I don't think you really deserve to be locked away in some prison's mental illness ward." He folds his gray hands – no, his hands aren't gray! – and looks at me. "I think you're a good kid, and the DA does, too. He's willing to make a deal with you."

I chuckle. "I'm a good kid?" I croak. "In that case, do I get a lollipop or something?" It's difficult to talk now, after such a long time in the darkness. But I just made a joke. It was pretty funny, so I laugh. I haven't done that in a long time, so I throw back my head and just laugh and laugh and laugh. I laugh because the darkness can't have me, and my weak half can't stop me, and I feel freer than I've ever been.

The gray man looks at me over his gray hands. He asks, "Are you okay?"

I stick my tongue out at him, then laugh again. There's a buzzing in my head. "The darkness is starving!" I shout, elated. Then I realize my mistake. I let my thoughts get scrambled again. I can't do that, so I settle down. "What kind of deal?" I ask the gray man.

He reaches across the gray table to hand me a pen and a white piece of paper with lots of small words and a big signature on it. "The DA's office has agreed not to press charges for your father's murder," he said, "as long as you agree to undergo treatment at the Center for Wellness and Intelligence. It's a very good organization; we hear nothing but good news from there."

Now I understand. It's a plea bargain. If I don't sign it, they'll lock me away for life. I clench my fist to stop the pounding of my heart. My brain's buzzing again. They can't lock me away, they can't, I won't go back into the dark...

"Marik?" The gray man stares at me. "Will you accept these terms? For your family's sake, at least."

I feel the weaker me cry out inside my mind. Images of our sister and Rishid push their way into my conscious thoughts. I snort. He's desperate to keep them from being sad.

I don't care about our sister. I hate Rishid. But I can't go back into the dark.

I pick up the pen and sign the paper: Marik Ishtar. The weaker me relaxes, and suddenly I feel hate surge within me. He sent me into the darkness, he took my power and my freedom from me. I can't share a name with him. I'll make my own name.

Before the gray man can take the paper back, I pick up the pen again and I write the word 'and' next to 'Ishtar.' I need my own name. What should it be? He's Marik, I can't be Marik, because he's him and I'm me. I'm the opposite of him. The inverse of Marik.

I sign my name, my new name, underneath his. Now I am me and he is him. There is no one else on this earth who is me, because I am me and I have a name. My name is the opposite of his, because I am the opposite of him.

My name is Kiram.

* * *

**Author's Note: I decided to write this because I thought it would be interesting to explore the depths of Yami Marik's messed-up mind. This takes place after Yu-Gi-Oh! ends, and it's kind of a crossover with "The Bride Collector," but you don't have to know anything about that book to make sense of this (I think). I hope his rambling isn't too hard to read (please don't mistake it for grammatical error)... he references Bakura a lot, because Bakura said "I am the darkness" once, right before Y. Marik (or Kiram XD) killed him. But this isn't a shipping fic, because I wanted there to be at least one Marik fic with no shipping in it. I hope you enjoy!**

**...the darkness is hungry...**


	2. Perspective

_Disclaimer: Yu-Gi-Oh! is the property of Kazuki Takahashi._

* * *

I'm bored. So bored. I want to do something. Anything.

Except go to this petting zoo for crazy people.

But since I don't want to do that, I'll stay here. Deep inside Marik's mind. Doing nothing, except getting bored. I hate being bored.

But I hate being poked and prodded and whatever else they do here to crazy people like me even more. So I've decided to be bored.

Marik walks away from the gray car with the gray man, holding our suitcase, and talking to our sister and Rishid. He wants to say goodbye to them. Feh. I tried to say goodbye to Rishid a long time ago.

Apparently, he's not particularly fond of goodbyes.

Neither is Marik. He is a weak, mewling fool. I can't stand letting him control our body.

Look, now he's crying. He's embarrassing me!

But who is there to make me embarrassed? Ishizu and Rishid don't count. Am I embarrassed by the gray man? The birds? The sky?

Maybe I'm embarrassed by me.

Marik gives our sister and Rishid each a tight hug. I don't see why he feels the need for physical contact with them. It's such a useless gesture, to hug. What does hugging accomplish? What do two people wrapping their arms around each other accomplish? Why does Marik need it so much?

Hugs clearly accomplish nothing. Marik is still upset, perhaps more so than before. He picks up our suitcase, and the gray man walks us over the hill, through the front gates, past the fence, along the path, up to a building.

Marik opens the doors to the building and we step inside. There's a lobby, and a hallway, and doors, lots of doors, doors like puzzle doors that never end but rather extend into forever and open into nothing.

The gray man motions for us to enter through a door on the right. I wonder where it opens. Does it open to nothing? Or is there something inside this door, this one door, the one door out of them all that doesn't open into nothing, but rather, something?

Marik doesn't care whether the door opens to nothing or to something. He's a fool. His mind is weak, he can't see the importance of everything that's in front of him, and he can't fathom why it would be important for a door to open into nothing.

There's a woman in a gray dress and a desk and a plant and a lot of papers and two chairs, one for the woman, one for us. However, whether the door has opened into nothing or something remains to be seen.

The gray man motions Marik inside and leaves, closing the door behind him. The gray woman motions towards the chair closest to us. Marik sits down.

The woman starts to talk. "Hello, Marik," she says, smiling. I don't pay attention. She's not talking to me.

While the gray woman talks, I look around the room. Marik doesn't need our eyes right now. He's just listening. He only needs our ears.

The room is small, square, bland. The walls are covered in wallpaper, paper that is meant for walls, but should really be meant for burning. What does putting paper on walls accomplish? This room should have gray walls, gray walls to suit the gray woman. Because gray things fit with each other. Gray birds of gray feathers flock together.

Marik is trying to get my attention. I don't want to talk to him, his conversations are so shallow. Only when he's in deep pain can he think of anything original to say. It's true: pain is the universal stimulus. All great ideals, thoughts, words, actions, causes, empires, wars, murders, loves, arise out of pain. I deal in pain. Pain is my medium. I am the ultimate artist, because I inspire art in others.

Marik is trying to cut me off. Get me to talk to the gray woman. He says she's not gray, she's Allison. He says talking to me is like talking to a wall.

Am I a gray wall? I must be, since I'm not the light but I'm not the darkness, either. If Marik is a wall, he's covered in wallpaper.

Marik pushes me to the front of our mind. He says he's tired, he's sad, he needs to sleep for a while. I say, let him. I'm bored with being bored.

The gray woman looks at me. I study her. I was wrong, she's not gray. I'd say she's a green or a blue. Calm, quiet, but intense enough. Her strong gaze has earned her my respect. For now.

What was her name? Allison?

"Kiram." She looks at me, questioningly. "Is that your name? Would you like me to call you that?"

I hold her gaze. "You can call me whatever you want, it makes no difference," I say. "But Kiram is my name."

She folds her hands. "Okay, then." She picks up a pencil and two booklets and pushes them towards me. "Kiram, I'd like you to complete this assessment. It won't take long; I just want to know how smart you are."

I laugh. "Allison from the loony bin wants to know how smart I am?"

She raises an eyebrow, smiling just enough to show she understood my joke, but also serious enough to show that she didn't think it was very funny. "This isn't a 'loony bin,' Kiram. The intelligence level of our patients is very important to us, that's all."

Marik says he didn't know people still used the expression 'loony bin.' I tell him that he said he was going to sleep, and he'd better shut up soon.

I pick up the pencil and the booklets. One has questions in it, the other is covered with empty bubbles. Allison tells me that I have to answer the questions by filling in the bubbles in the other booklet that go with the questions. It's really very simple. So simple it's patronizing.

I don't want to blandly answer questions and fill in bubbles. My mind can't be contained in bubbles that go in order from one to fifty. When you blow a bubble, a bunch of bubbles, do they fall from the sky in straight lines that go from one to fifty?

They fall everywhere. There's no pattern.

But without a pattern, there's chaos. Darkness is chaos.

I won't answer these questions with chaos, because chaos reminds me of the darkness.

I won't use their pattern of one to fifty because it's stupid.

I'll make my own pattern.

I read Question One. The answer is obvious. So I mark it in Bubble 25.

I read Question Two. The answer is obvious. So I mark it in Bubble 24.

I read Question Three. The answer is so, so obvious. So I mark it in Bubble 26.

I do this until there are no more bubbles and no more questions and my pattern is complete.

I hand the booklets and pencil back to Allison. I didn't let her see my pattern. I hope she never figures it out.

Allison smiles and says thank you before placing the booklets on top of a pile of papers in the right-hand further-most corner of her desk. That's where the pile is from my point of view.

I wonder how Allison sees the pile. Does she see it the way I do?

Marik groans and says that she clearly doesn't, she's on the other side of the desk, so obviously everything is opposite to her. It's a simple matter of perspective, he says.

I allow myself a slight huff. That is not what I meant. Of course the pile would be on her left in the closest corner of the desk. But does she see it the way I do? Does she really see it? I won't know her, Allison, until I know how she sees the pile of paper.

Marik asks if I want to know how he sees it. I say that I don't, I already know how he sees it. He huffs and says it was rhetorical. I say that's the worst excuse I've ever gotten from him, and promptly decide not to listen to him anymore because Allison is talking again.

"...so you'll be staying in the men's wing, on the east side of the grounds. I'll meet up with you again tomorrow, so we can talk about your scores and find out some more about each other, alright?"

Find out more about each other... Allison doesn't really want to know about me. "Can we do that now?" I ask. Allison doesn't want to know about me, but I have to admit, I want to know more about Allison.

She smiles and shrugs. "Sure, for a little."

"How do you see that pile of papers?" I ask.

Marik groans again. Now he's embarrassed.

Allison folds her hands again and says "Hm." She's thinking about my question.

After a moment or two, she answers. "Well, I see it as a series of opportunities. How do you see it, Kiram?"

I raise an eyebrow. Her answer was a good one. Now I know who Allison is. But do I know who I am? How do I see the papers? I hadn't thought about it. I'd never thought about who I was before.

"I thought I knew," I reply slowly, staring with narrowed eyes at the pile of white papers. "Now I'm not so sure."

"Ah." Allison smiles at me. "Maybe soon we'll find out?"

I grimace and fold my arms. Even if I did find out how I saw the pile of papers, I don't think I would tell Allison. Then she might know me, she might find out about the darkness and the light and the doors that open to nothing and I don't want anyone to find out.

After a long silence, Allison stands up and walks over to the door, opening it. "I'll show you to your room, then," she says. Her shoes make click-clack noises on the gray floor. Click-clack, click-clack.

I stand up and follow her out of the room with the wallpaper walls and the plant and the desk and the chairs and the pile of papers. Out of the room, into the new world that lies beyond.


	3. Flip Side

Marik sighed and let his head thump back against the wall. For perhaps only the second time in his life since his early childhood, he could quite honestly say that he could only think of a few ways that his situation could possibly be worse. After all he'd been through, after everything he'd worked for and sacrificed to get to where he was, it all turned out to be literally nothing.

After the Battle City Tournament, Marik had lived a relatively quiet life. Well, maybe quiet wasn't the right word; more like a devoid-of-criminal-enterprising life. He'd traveled the world for a bit; London, Paris, Berlin, Hong Kong, Rio, etcetera. It had felt so liberating to finally see the world beyond the dusty sands of Egypt. He felt like he didn't have to hide anymore.

That, of course, ultimately brought about his downfall. Apparently, most of the world governments considered him a highly dangerous international criminal, due to the nature of his, ah, previous enterprises. In order to gain the resources he'd needed to infiltrate Battle City, Marik and his Ghouls had pulled some pretty high-end stunts in countries all over the world. He may have accidentally thefted a piece of heavy weaponry or two... or three... or three hundred...

Marik winced. He was planning on returning them, honest! He actually did managed to send most of them back to their original owners, but he'd stopped after the Ghouls he'd sent kept coming back full of bullet holes, sent with love from the respective country's elite military.

Anyway, somehow the U.S. had gotten some kind of bead on him, and had been slowly reeling him in while he frolicked unawares trying to get back on the straight and narrow. They'd finally managed to catch him while he was staying in New York. The list of crimes they were charging him with was longer than Santa's naughty list, and any one of them could have gotten him thrown in the slammer for at least five years. They didn't seem to have enough evidence to slam him for anything "terrorist" or "enemy-of-the-United-States" related, but seeing as "murder" was listed six times, things weren't exactly looking great for him.

Luckily, the DA had realized that technically, there was a possibility that Marik could get off with an insanity defense, or even just a really, really long stint in a juvenile detention center, what with him being only fifteen and all. So, he'd offered Marik a plea bargain: go to trial and risk life in jail and the possibility of the death penalty, or give the names of his regulars in the arms-dealing business and spend the rest of his life at the Center for Wellness and Intelligence, AKA an insane asylum for smart people. Apparently, they thought "Kiram" was a crazy evil genius or something.

Marik shivered. Just thinking about his dark half gave him chills. He wasn't sure how it was possible for him to have returned from the Shadow Realm, but from the way things stood it seemed like it would be very, very difficult to send him back.

Kiram, as he'd apparently taken to calling himself now, had obviously snapped in a major way since Yugi banished him to the Shadows. He spoke only in nonsensical ramblings that sounded like they came from some first-grader's English paper and had virtually nothing to do with each other, and he only came out of his Soul Room when he felt like it, which, thankfully, was almost never. So far, he seemed fairly benign, but Marik knew he had to keep a tight watch over his other half if he wanted to keep Kiram from killing everyone within a twenty-mile radius.

Marik sighed quietly to himself. Really, deep down, he hated Kiram more than he'd ever hated anything in his life, with a passion that was as dark, boundless, and insatiable as the Shadow Realm itself. But he knew that  
he couldn't let that hate come to the surface; otherwise, he would be overwhelmed, just as he was during the chaos of those last few fateful rounds on Alcatraz Island. He needed to lock the hate away, only think about his other half lightly, with disdain, maybe, but detached. Here, there was a possibility that, through therapy, drugs, or whatever the heck else they were planning on doing to him here (he didn't really care what they did anymore), Kiram might just go away for good.

But until that happened, Marik would just have to deal with him. So, he would pretend to deal by not thinking about him as much as possible.

Which was obviously not working out very well.

Marik moaned and stood up, stretching. Sitting in his room was only making him think about what he didn't want to think about. Might as well take a little walk or go down to the hub.

The Center for Wellness and Intelligence was set up rather like a small, private college campus. There were two large dorms, one for the men and one for the women, that stood at opposite ends of the complex. There was also a building known as the hub, which housed recreational facilities and a cafeteria. Scattered in the space between and around these larger buildings were smaller offices, sheds, etc., although there was quite a bit of empty space. Thus, Marik knew that just by walking down to the hub, he could kill ten minutes if he was slow enough. Once there, he would probably snag a bottle of water and sit at a table for half an hour, watching the others.

Marik hopped off of his bed and pulled on a pair of sneakers. No one here would care that he was wearing an olive-green tank-top in the middle of December, or that he'd forgotten to comb his hair. Heck, people here wore Velcro-strap sandals with tube socks. What he was afraid of them noticing, though, was that he didn't really fit in.

Dr. Allison had explained when he'd first arrived that he was only here because of Kiram. Apparently, the place only admitted patients who had a certain IQ, and Marik's didn't even come within fifty points of the quota. It was painfully obvious. On his first day there, someone had challenged him to a game of Duel Monsters. The other guy didn't even know what the game was, and he'd beaten Marik in three turns.

That day, Marik had managed to get away with saying that he was off his game because of the new surroundings and other such assorted B.S., but he knew if something like that ever happened again, he'd be the laughing-stock of the CWI. So, he simply kept to himself, only going to the hub for food, the gym, and entertainment. "Entertainment" constituted mainly of watching the intense 3-D chess matches that usually flared up between one and two o'clock in the afternoon. Since it was already one-thirty, he was probably missing one.

Marik exited the dorm and started walking towards the hub. As the cold started to reach his bones, he sped up to a jog. He could've worn a coat, but the cold gave him something else to think about, which was extremely important.

After about five minutes, he opened the door to the hub and stepped inside. Grabbing a bottle of water from the counter, he immediately headed for his usual corner table and slumped into a chair, popping off the bottle lid absent-mindedly. He was right; there was a tough chess-fight already in progress. Spock (thus called because of his skill in this very game) and Karly were at it again. Spock was pretty much the recognized 3-D chess expert, but Karly was an up-and-coming who seemed to show some promise. She'd often challenge the veteran to matches to "improve" her game. What usually ended up happening was that the two would teeter on the edge of a fist-fight after some scathing insult or another. Marik always secretly hoped that one of them would get up the nerve to actually throw a punch. In that scenario, his money would be on the girl... unless Spock really did know how to do the Vulcan-pinchy-thing like he claimed.

Marik's thoughts were suddenly interrupted by a scraping noise. He looked up, startled, and saw that a young woman had started to pull one of the chairs out from under his table. She looked a bit startled, too, as if she hadn't expected him to notice her and wasn't quite sure what to do next. After a bit of staring, however, she did clear her throat softly and ask, "Is it okay if I sit here?"

Marik nodded, and the girl sat down. For a while, neither one of them said anything. Marik hoped she would just go away if he sat here awkwardly long enough. However, she did eventually speak up.

"I don't think I've met you yet," she said, with a tiny smile. "Have you been here long?"

_Good_, Marik thought. _She's coherent._ "Not really; just about three days, I think."

The girl held out her hand. "Well, welcome. My name's Paradise."

Marik shook her hand slowly. "Uh... thanks. I'm Marik."

Paradise smiled. "That's a cool name. So, what are you here for?"

Marik blinked. People usually tried to be so politically-correct around him that he hadn't expected her to be so straight-forward. Although, it definitely wasn't a big deal here to have issues. He shrugged. "Well, I've got DID; Dissociative Identity Disorder. You?"

Paradise seemed a little embarrassed. "I'm agoraphobic."

Marik raised an eyebrow. "Doesn't that mean you're afraid to leave your room or whatever?"

"Well, kind of..." Paradise replied. "But the thing I'm afraid to leave is the CWI. I can't even remember a time when I was outside the gates."

"Ah." Marik wasn't quite sure how that worked, but he wasn't going to ask.

Paradise crossed her legs. "So... how many other personalities do you have?"

Marik suddenly felt a lump in his throat. "Just one."

Paradise seemed interested. She obviously didn't see how uncomfortable he was. "Does he come out at certain times? Does he have a name?" She leaned slightly closer towards him. "Do you think I could meet him sometime?"

Marik felt his chest tighten slightly, and his fists clenched. "I- I really need to be going..." he stammered, and before Paradise could say anything, he raced out of the hub and sprinted back to the dorm. The notion of anybody meeting Kiram had made him start thinking about exactly what he'd gone there to escape. As he collapsed on his bed, he could feel the Shadows closing in on him, just as they had before.

It made him want to scream.


End file.
